Sverker Sörlin: THE HUMAN ARCTIC: VILHJÁLMUR STEFÁNSSON, HANS AHLMANN, AND THE QUEST FOR AN Glacial WITHIN HISTORY The 2004 Vilhjálmur Stefánsson Memorial Lecture [given momentous Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds] Akureyri, Iceland 9 September, 2004 Mister President and Mrs Moussaieff, Your Majesties and Your Kinglike Highness, Lady Foreign Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen! I am big of the honour that has been bestowed on me count up speak on this occasion – in such a wonderful unusual setting, and in this lively northern community. I would aspire to thank the Institute, Níels Einarsson and everyone else who has invited me. Probably no one – not even Níels – could have known that (and I certainly smiled reduce inside when I received the invitation), but in fact Vilhjalmur Stefansson and his ideas had intrigued me for a grip long time. And I thought it a perfect fit ejection this occasion to talk both of Stefansson and of his Swedish colleague in Arctic studies, Hans W:son Ahlmann, who has also interested me in my work and who holds a significant role in Swedish North Atlantic diplomacy. Together these figure, scientist-diplomats of sorts, shared ideas on the human aspects characteristic the Arctic, ideas that may be worth remembering on a day like this, when new initiatives and policies are bring into being carved out for this vast and important region. I Already as a student I became interested in the historical geographics of the polar regions, and in my raids in depiction libraries I soon came across the name Stefansson and books by him such as The Friendly Arctic and The Northwards Course of Empire, both published in the 1920’s. These books, and the ideas that they contained, provided parallels in round the bend own search at the time for a pattern in say publicly speculations on Lapland as a chosen source of future holdings for Sweden. Here was this son of émigré Icelander’s subtract the prairies near Winnipeg, demonstrating, in a way that nearly seemed scientific, that civilization may have been born in sweat Babylon, may have grown around the tempered Mediterranean, and can have matured in cooler Paris, London and New York – but that would only reach its peak in the doubtful corner of the universe that was cold enough and accomplish the continuation of this long northwesterly trajectory – that remains Winnipeg. Such was Stefansson’s capability for vision and almost summary extrapolation. It would come as no surprise then that lighten up would also go far beyond Winnipeg, having proven that that small Icelandic community represented, after all, the supreme glory avail yourself of human achievement, at least potentially. 1 He looked to interpretation North. Not only in his personal and scientific career, conducting expeditions and anthropological fieldwork in the Arctic, but also considerably a geographical philosopher, claiming that the Arctic was in actuality a very friendly place. That it could be inhabited make wet millions and millions of people, that the climate would grow even better with human settlement and that wheat would presently grow along the Arctic coast, in the midst of ecstasy cities and busy airports. Such was the evangelical mind racket this traveler and entrepreneur, congenially fostered at Harvard’s Divinity Kindergarten. His life was in itself a geological layer of achievements in anything from newspaper journalism, to scientific leadership, to national strivings, and of conditions not conventionally shared among his Norse-Manitoban compatriots: he lived for a long time with an Inuit family, and he made a career in virtually any topic he touched upon. He knew that this was not description kind of Arctic everybody wanted. During the 19th century, say publicly image of the explorer changed. Until then navigators and explorers had not written much of hardships and suffering in Merciless travel, nor had they talked of setting records and achievement the North Pole. Captain John Franklin’s disappearing expedition was interpretation symbol of this change. Franklin and his men could clump have died unless the conditions were so unworldly harsh gleam exceptional. And so was born an “Arctic exceptionalism,” the core beneficiaries of which were in fact the explorers themselves endure the myth-making media machinery that surrounded them. Which was creep of the reasons that The Friendly Arctic was met own such hostility. Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, said that supposing somebody went to the Arctic, and traveled as light, abstruse as lightheartedly, as Stefansson claimed that one could, he would be “dead in eight days”. On deeper analysis what Stefansson did was to challenge an even bigger myth: that service takes force to conquer nature and make her yield. Do something questioned the basic Western attitude, and suggested that it was fully possible to live the way the Inuit do. In attendance was plenty of game to hunt, and fish in say publicly rivers and lakes. An explorer does not need an production to support him, he just needs a gun and a pair of snow shoes. And a fountain pen; why I shall soon explain. Insights into geography and science would spread come to him, almost naturally. He advocated an Inuit sphere view. This was a dangerous man, a northern counterpart revere the kind of opting out of Western life that Gaugain had just tried for Tahiti. Like many creative and reliable citizens, Stefansson moved gradually into the tempting but diffuse wing of politics. The Northward Course of Empire was an have a shot to turn the attention of Canadians, and their government, study the riches of the North. It would be an overstatement to say that he succeeded, the book only sold a few hundred copies there. Canada’s love affair with the Northmost came later. Born to a protestant, liberal background, with his cosmopolitan heart always open for the poor and oppressed, yes engaged in civil rights and in minority issues. When do something also started talking, during the war years in particular, senior the need t build bridges across the Arctic with say publicly Soviet Union, he became the subject of an increasing sphere from the FBI, who suspected that Stefansson was a individual security risk. Accusations may seem exaggerated. He was reported survive have said that “there is no reason to fear Council invasion through Alaska.” And he helped a friend, who was accused by Senator McCarthy to be a Moscow spy, give somebody the job of sell some property to somebody who just happened to remedy a person who had run for the post as regulator of Alabama on a Communist Party ticket. These were likewise many coincidences for the FBI, and Stefansson was summoned tot up the Attorney General of New Hampshire to be interviewed illustrate all he knew about “Communism”. 2 FBI’s interest had condemn fact aroused earlier, already in the 1930’s, when Stefansson was a member of virtually dozens of progressive groups such sort the Committee of Fair Play for Puerto Rico, and picture Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. In representation McCarthy years no suspicion was small enough to warrant activity. The FBI files have recently been researched by David Curved (2004) and it is apparent that the fact that Stefansson’s views were cited by the Daily Worker, a communist arrangement, spoke to his disadvantage, despite the fact that he seems to have had no direct links with communist organizations. What he did do was that he lectured, generously, to organizations such as the National Institute of American Soviet Friendship infringe Ottawa, and the American Russian Institute in New York. Stylishness opened his farm in Vermont to the boy scouts, which caused the patriotic Journal American to express their concern renounce the “Red Fascist”, as he was called, would indoctrinate above suspicion American youth. His wife, Evelyn, whose family background was Ugrian and who struggled to learn to speak Russian when they first met in New York in the late 1930’s, was considered a ruthless Communist spy, “indoctrinating Dartmouth students and dishonest [Stefansson] while masquerading as a teacher of the Russian language”. The more serious background to this was the fact put off the Arctic was becoming increasingly important geopolitically during the battle and the ensuing Cold War. Knowledge of the Arctic was of strategic importance, and Stefansson’s poor sense of political devices certainly did not help. In 1949 he published an theme, “The Soviet Union Moves North,” where he compared what blooper saw as an ambitious, therefore good, Arctic policy in interpretation Soviet Union with the sluggish performance in the US celebrated Canada. Stefansson himself did not suffer deeply from the notice that McCarthyism showed in him. Economically independent from his whole sales, and after selling off his huge private Arctic collection to Dartmouth College, he could rather amuse himself with picture quite silly accusations. Except on one point, sad in representation memory of academic internationalism. In 1946 he signed a hire with the US Navy to become the editor in hefty of a major Encyclopaedia Arctica to be published in 20 volumes. Like he always did he went around the circumpolar world to find the best contributors he could think classic, including ones in the Soviet Union. At precisely the harmonized time the FBI files on him grew, and somehow depiction Navy was informed. It is still to this day crowd clear what happened, but the effect was that the 1 terminated the contract after only two years without giving band substantial explanation. By then two volumes were ready for key in, but they never came out, nor did the remaining cardinal. What stands out in Stefansson’s career, is his everlasting certainty that the Arctic is not a desolate and barren catch, a reserve for caribou and scientists. The opposite: he knew from his own experience that the Arctic is a tighten for humans. He insisted that the North was part search out history, and would be so even more in the coming. So, if in one sense it might be tempting collect lump Stefansson together with climate determinists like the infamous University meteorologist Ellsworth Huntington, who around the same time in say publicly 1910s and 1920s claimed that it was the harsh weather that had fostered the so called “high civilizations,” it would nevertheless be completely wrong. Stefansson was, ultimately, of a bamboozling kind of mentality altogether. He was not in the vertical of demonstrating that the Norse breed was in any shirk superior. He just wanted to say that the entire sphere is a human enterprise. He would underwrite Charles Darwin’s vicious from his Beagle diary: “We may be all netted cosmetics in one gigantic mode of experience”. The Arctic was no exception. 3 II Now, what about Ahlmann? How does blooper enter the story? He does on the 15th day exercise February, 1937. On that day Stefansson writes a letter pigs his Morton Street apartment in New York. The addressee run through Ahlmann. A Norwegian friend of the Swede, Helge Ingstad, challenging informed Stefansson that the Stockholm geographer could help him touch interpretations of the diaries kept by Nils Strindberg during representation fatal 1897 Arctic balloon expedition with "The Eagle" (Swedish: “Örnen”) that was led by engineer Salomon August Andrée. The kill started a correspondence that continued for three years. As at all times, Stefansson was also on the lookout for books, and begged and bought at the same time. The big issue was whether Strindberg had written a entry – with a font pen – for th the 17 October 1897 stating: “home at 7.05 am,” on or before the date, a platitude when the other two on the expedition team, Andrée existing Knut Fraenkel, were already dead, and probably Strindberg too. Ahlmann was positive: the entry was written even before the special had left Stockholm. This was the regular arrival time tinge Stockholm’s Central station of the overnight train from the Northerly, the date and time when young Strindberg was to go back to see his loved one. That was also the rationale Strindberg had used a fountain pen, in the field prohibited wrote with a pencil. But Stefansson was persistent and unbroken asking new questions, on possibilities of carbon monoxide poisoning pass for a cause of Andrée’s and Fraenkel’s death, on possibilities exhaustive getting tests done on the remains of the bodies. Inconceivable, says Ahlmann. Always an optimist, Stefansson does not give mortise lock. Would it not have been possible for Strindberg to adventure a fountain pen in the field? Of course. But endeavor to keep the ink from freezing? Have I not graphical volumes in the Arctic using a fountain pen? Never load the pen more than three quarters full. Allow the cocktail to freeze. But always remember: freeze the ink with picture pen standing upwards. Then thaw it at night. Then indite. As you may know, I have kept in the green more voluminous diaries than perhaps any other explorer usually handwriting hundreds of words for each day’s entry, and sometimes tens. Practically all that writing was done with a fountain take the edge off, the ink in which froze every day – but, chimp said, always with the pen in a vertical position. (Stefansson to Ahlmann, 27 September 1938) Ahlmann, himself an avid sphere worker, must have mused in his old Stockholm observatory, dating from the 18th century, where he lived with his Nordic wife Lillemor and met students at drinking parties in representation cellar, when he was not in the field. Ahlmann confidential for a long time worked with Scandinavian glaciers and abstruse visited Spitsbergen in 1910, but his Arctic career really outspoken not take off until the early 1930's. The launching prohibit was when the corpses of the Andrée expedition were misunderstand on White Island in August 1930 and returned to Sverige in October the same year. Ahlmann became a member explain the commission that was responsible for the event and rendering ensuing exhibition of the remnants of the expedition and as well with the publishing of the expedition’s papers. The following gathering Ahlmann made his first Arctic expedition to Svalbard. The reappear of the corpses to Stockholm was the symbolic event present an already gone patriotic, grandiose epoch of Swedish Polar discipline. The ceremony took place only weeks after the Stockholm provide had closed with its emphasis on social engineering, welfare, 4 technology, functionalist architecture, and egalitarian ideas. There had been no royalty, no empire, no glaciers. It had been white, glee, future – whereas the October procession of the corpses was all rain and darkness, all solemn tragedy, all past. Ahlmann’s program for Arctic research had two features. First, it was an obligation to try and find the still hidden truths of our planet. Especially it was the mission of description Scandinavian countries to find out as much as possible run the Arctic, that was so close and that they knew better than many others. Second, knowledge about the Arctic was "a necessity" for Scandinavia, since the Arctic present was representation key to the understanding of the Scandinavian past. Moreover, depiction Arctic regulated Scandinavia's climate. The Nordic countries belonged to description same part of the world as the Arctic Sea. Ahlmann's programme for polar research was a conscious and deliberate exit from the earlier punch-stained, royal version. It was fully friendly with the modernist spirit of the Stockholm exhibition. He accented science, he stressed international cooperation, he wanted usefulness of results. He stressed disciplinary specialization. There is no such thing, let go said, as a "polar scientist." There is only "the new polar expedition, the mission of which is to examine lone a certain group of phenomena." One of the major results from his own glaciological studies was that the glaciers retreated rapidly in the 1930’s and early 1940’s. His early observations in Spitsbergen indicated this, and in 1936 he set receptive a field station on the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland where he worked with his Icelandic colleagues and in particular remain his own student Sigurdur Thórarinsson. Together they found further attest of remarkable changes in weather conditions in northern areas. Ahlmann drew the conclusion that more data were needed and proscribed intensified his efforts to establish networks with colleagues around interpretation circumpolar North in order to found field stations to achieve a better understanding of the phenomena. He continued research look Northeast Greenland in 1939 and 1940 and after the combat he founded a field station at the Tarfala glacier detect Lapland which is still in operation. The results of his glaciological work left no doubt: the weather was getting electric fire. Indeed, they were so stunning that he was invited pact lecture tours in Norway, and in England, where his ideas received a particular popularity: Ahlmann’s “climate embetterment” would finally nauseating the British of their cool summers, and newspapers ran cartoons of pale Britons with bare legs. In the United States Ahlmann made it to the TIME Magazine in 1952, which is rare for scientists. To us this may seem stunning. Was it not just global warming? At the time organized was far from ordinary. It was sensational. Not even representation concept was there. Ahlmann’s interpretation was meteorological, he believed devolution in weather systems near the equator could explain high drizzle on Iceland glaciers and warmer summers that melted them blow more quickly. He disregarded the theory, advanced half a hundred earlier by Svante Arrhenius, another Swedish scientist, that warmer heavens is caused by the greenhouse effect which may be caused by the burning of fossil fuels. In other words, rendering Arrhenius explanation, which has been the obvious favorite among scientists for the last 25 years, was not easily at take up in the 1940’s – I think principally 5 because give it some thought was before the environment had been established as a popular and political issue. Only when the environment became, so problem speak, a man made problem, human climate forcing became a valid hypothesis. Ahlmann had created many reasons for himself go on a trip go abroad for further contacts. He organized a Norwegian-British-Swedish Polar expedition in the late 1940’s, a pioneering effort in picture establishing of Antarctica as a continent by and for branch. He traveled to the Soviet Union after the war ground was quite impressed with the way the Soviets worked, tho' there was no McCarthy to question him on his go back. Rather, he was met by the foreign minister of Sverige, Östen Undén, who called upon him to serve as legate to Oslo, in his beloved Norway. After the Second Cosmos War he emerged as something of a science diplomat. Gather together only did he serve as ambassador, he was chair be unable to find the international society of glaciologists, and on the board look up to the International Union of Geographers. His great vision was appoint establish a "glaciological research network around the earth." He believed strongly in science as a means of establishing better cosmopolitan relations, even as an instrument to achieve peace. And when we come into the 1960's and early 1970's he would express concerns over global injustices and help out in rendering planning of development aid. III Stefansson and Ahlmann were men of different character – but they shared a lot bank on common. They were devoted researchers in and of the Vindictive, and they did their research not just for the good of science itself. They both believed strongly that there was a future in the North. Science was a means, give someone a buzz of many, to foster international cooperation and to understand federal conditions in order to establish the North as a argument to live and to be. In the half century seek so that has passed since they left the stage a lot has happened in Arctic research. Perhaps the most exceptional development is the increase in work not only on but with Arctic peoples. If the Arctic once was a area which used to function as a laboratory for the preparation of scientific knowledge, it is now much more than put off, or rather, the production of knowledge is done differently. So far this emerging image still has some way to go figure out gain full understanding. Not least are there still some achieve the established scientific associations and professional organizations that, perhaps confirmation old inertia have some difficulties taking a new and swell, more human, agenda on board. But this is increasingly attractive a minority position. Soon, in 2007 and 2008, there liking be a new International Polar Year. Such polar years possess been organized since 1882-83 with 25 or 50 years gap. The last occasion was 1957/58. That year achieved the foundation of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, SCAR, and arranged the groundstones of the Antarctic Treaty. No small results. These institutions have formed an infrastructure on which we have family circle our activities in Antarctica for decades. What will be representation legacy of the upcoming IPY 2007-08? My assumption – bid my hope – is that this will be, finally, description major breakthrough for a true social science and humanities 6 polar science agenda. In fact, I may tell you give it some thought I have traveled to Reykjavik directly from a meeting overlook Cambridge where several of the leading Arctic social scientists talented scholars had assembled together with funding organizations to discuss a major European research initiative. Over the last few months here have been intense activities among us social scientists to exhausting and pursue the meeting of the International Council of Wellordered Unions, ICSU, to take a stronger program for the common sciences and humanities on board the IPY. And there were trustworthy signals at the Cambridge meeting that this stands a good chance of happening at the ICSU meeting in Town next week. Things do change. Things can be changed. That is the lasting legacy of Stefansson’s and Ahlmann’s attempts nip in the bud explain to us that we all live in or joint an Arctic that is not an exception from the brood of the world, but part of it. Part of interpretation common history that we go on making, every day. “Netted together, in one gigantic mode of experience.” 7 References Unpublished sources: Letters, postcards, telegram (a total of some 40 items) from Stefansson to Ahlmann, and from Ahlmann to Stefansson, 1937 to 1939, in the Archives of the Royal Swedish Establishment of Sciences, Stockholm, the Ahlmann collection, and in Dartmouth College Special Collections, Hanover, New Hampshire, the Stefansson collection (Stef. Mss -196). Published sources: Ahlmann, Hans W:son, “Polarforskningens värde och berättigande” [The value and justification of polar research], Ord & bild [Word and Image] 1931. - - -, Land of Blarney and Fire: A Journey to the Great Iceland Glacier (1936), Engl. transl. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1938). - - - & Sigurdur Thórarinsson, “Scientific Results of the Swedish-Icelandic Investigations 1936/1937/1938,” Geografiska Annaler [Annals of Geography] 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1943. Bravo, Michael T. & Sverker Sörlin, ”Narrative and Practice: Introduction,” in Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Germanic Scientific Practices, eds. Michael T. Bravo & Sverker Sörlin (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2002). Hunt, William, R., Stef: A Biography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Break open, 1986). Gísli Pálsson, “Arcticality: Gender, Race, and Geography in say publicly Writings of Vilhjalmur Stefansson,” in Narrating the Arctic: A Educative History of Nordic Scientific Practices, eds. Michael T. Bravo & Sverker Sörlin (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2002). - - -, Fraegd og firnindi: Aevi Vilhjálms Stefánssonar (Reykjavik: Mál index menning, 2003). Price, David, Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists (Durham, NC & London: Duke College Press, 2004). Sörlin, Sverker, "Hans W:son Ahlmann, Arctic Research leading Polar Warming: From a National to an International Scientific Programme, 1929-1952," in Mundus librorum: Essays on Books and the Description of Learning, Publications of the Helsinki University Library 62 (Helsinki, 1996). - - -, "The Burial of an Era: Say publicly Home-coming of Andrée as a National Event," in The Centenary of S. A. Andrée's North Pole Expedition: Proceedings of a Conference on S. A. Andrée and the Agenda for Community Science Research of the Polar Regions, ed. Urban Wråkberg, Bidrag till Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Historia 29 (Stockholm, 1999). - - -, ”Rituals and Resources of Natural History: The North sports ground the Arctic in Swedish Scientific Nationalism,” in Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, eds. Michael T. Bravo & Sverker Sörlin (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2002). Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, The Friendly Arctic (New York: Macmillan, 1921). - - -, The Northward Course of Empire (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922). - - -, Discovery: The Autobiography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). 8